Lessons of the Iraq War
The 2003-2012 war in Iraq has been the first 21st Century large-scale U.S.-led military operation against a state with a comparatively advanced defense infrastructure and economy. Although in the long run Washington has failed to attain its ...
... symbolic significance for the Kurds. Ten years ago, this writer separately interviewed Jalal Talabani (current president of Iraq) and Massoud Barzani (current President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region). Both men said the same thing: Kirkuk is our Kurdish Jerusalem. The Basic Law of Iraqi Kurdistan says that Kirkuk is the capital of the region. But the Arabs did not agree with this, the more so that Kirkuk is located near the second largest oil and gas fields in Iraq, which may fetch $1 trillion in the next ten years, but into whose ...